Widespread technological advancements are changing the ways in which people interact with the machines that play such a vital and prominent role in their lives, and non-carbon life forms are taking on greater significance in our day-to-day lives.  Non-carbon life forms consist of networks, robots, structures, electronic devices/systems and virtual entities. We are entering a future in which decisions in the home, in the marketplace, in the workplace will increasingly be made by these entities.

As a result, many children are growing up in a technologically complex world that combines artificial intelligence, robotics and mechanical engineering.  Children are increasingly coming to love and care for these non-carbon life forms, especially as toys become both more robotic and more life-like.  Many toys are now designed to elicit emotional responses too, as well as display a sense of self-awareness, and the ability to change their behavior over time.

A new device out of Japan embodies this trend.  Introducing…the Huggy Pajama – a new wearable system aimed at promoting physical interaction in remote communication between parent and child.

This system allows parents and children to virtually “embrace” one another through a hugging interface device, and a wearable, hug reproducing pajama connected through the Internet. The parents are then tasked with hugging a small mobile doll with an embedded pressure sensing circuit. This pajama is able to simulate a hug to the wearer as well as generate warmth to accompany the hug, display color changes according to distance of separation between parent and child, and display emoticons.

Perhaps, in the future, larger iterations will be developed for love-starved couples in long-distance relationships, lonely business travelers, hospitalized patients, elderly in nursing homes, etc.  Staying emotionally connected over physical distance via wearable technology has a variety of applications for the future.